Monthly Archives: June 2012

The Real Texas is an action adventure game that plays like a mashup of Zelda: Link to the Past and Ultima VI.
Sam, an ordinary Texas rancher, is on holiday in England when he falls into a blue portal and lands in The Strange Texas.

While holidaying in England, an ordinary rancher from Texas is trapped in an abandoned castle. There he finds a portal to a town called Strange, whose residents are somehow all stuck in a purgatory dimension of Texas.

Trailer

The Real Texas is an epic action RPG with gun combat, lots of secret items and areas, NPC day/night cycles, bosses, puzzles, dungeons, zombies and cross-dressing.
In development for 5 years, The Real Texas was first launched two weeks ago and has been received very positively by a small audience. This has allowed for bugs and compatibility issues to be resolved.
With the release this week of the version 1.2 the game is definitely ready for a large audience.

The Real Texas FAQWhat is the game like? Is it more exploration or more shooting?
It’s a pretty even balance between exploration/problem solving, and shooting/dungeons. There are no standard fetch quests or the like but the NPCs in the game all play a part in the unfolding of the story. You can open drawers or other furniture in peoples’ houses, search things, store your items wherever you like or drop them on the ground– a full inventory system.
You can interact with most objects, whether they do something or not, and NPCs have conversation trees as well as a day-and-night cycle. The game itself takes place in a fairly “local” area, so exploration is more focused on gradually unlocking new places or connecting them together rather than travelling to whole other towns. There’s only one town in the game but it’s really detailed.
There is also a keyword system, which is used for trying out secret actions you might have thought of, or mentioning certain key phrases to NPCs. It’s definitely not a text adventure game where you have to type very often, but it’s super fun to figure out a secret topic to mention to somebody, and hear what they have to say. Typing in keywords is a comparatively minor part of the game, though.

How do the shooty parts play?
It’s something of a new mechanic; at least I’m not aware of any games that work exactly the same way. Check out some of the other gameplay videos to get a sense for this (more coming soon, too.)
he core idea is that you aim with the mouse, and walk with WASD (or JIKL if you are left-handed.)
You can’t move and aim at the same time, and there isn’t rapid fire per se. Instead, you press SPACEBAR (or the right mouse button) to draw your gun, and then the left mouse button to shoot.
Rather than base gameplay around stats (e.g., hit points) you have to manouevre strategically to avoid being shot or have other damaging effects placed on you. Most effects are short-lived but fairly severe, so it can be frantic to try and recover. Most enemies do not have simple attacks, but combine different effects to make your life difficult. Now, there’s nothing wrong with stats such as hit points, damage modifiers, etc.; it’s just that The Real Texas is more focused on novel mechanics than on stats.
There are a handful of weapons which all work very differently. Likewise there are lots of helpful items with very different effects. Because some of the effects you encounter are so severe, these items can make a huge difference depending on the situation. But I’m not going to spoil anything here.
The mechanics are genuinely pretty novel and I hope you will enjoy it!

Are there bosses/dungeons?
Yes and yes. The game is an action RPG and can be pretty challenging in places.
Remember there are no hit points in the game. Think about what the implications are here for boss battles. Every boss is highly unique; I’m not saying one hit kills every boss, but they all work quite differently to one another. I worked really hard to make the boss-encounters unique.

Note for Linux Users: Right now, only a i386 (32bit) package is available. This was a major oversight on my part, I will build a 64 bit package ASAP. At that time I will also make available a .tar.gz package for non-debian-based distros. If you run 64 bit Linux, you may want to hold off purchasing although it is possible to get the game to run.

About Kitty Lambda
Kitty Lambda is an independent studio based in Calgary, Alberta.
Calvin French is the main person behind The Real Texas.
Music is by Yesso of Lumental Inc.

Chris Gianelloni, the guy who made the point and click adventure flash series Reincarnation (which is available to play for free from the browser), wants to finally create a full scale Reincarnation game which is called “Reincarnation: The Root of All Evil” . Reincarnation is about a Vile demon who is sent to earth to find bad guys who are given another chance to redeem themselves, he needs to find them and see if they are back to their old ways (which they are), and send them back to hell by killing them in many interesting ways. It’s quite challenging puzzle game, and the voice of the Vile demon is excellent (with it’s many “evil” lines.

It’s already halfway there (8k out of 15k), and we can make it happen !
Show your support for the many free games Chris already given to us

Here is a walktrough (Spoilers Alert) of one of the past games in the series so you can see what it’s all about. Reincarnation: Let the Evil Times Roll walktrough

From Reincarnation: The Root of All Evil kickstarter page :
That being said, I’ve been tossing this idea back and forth in my head for quite some time now, and finally got to work on it in May of 2011. The idea is to have a download-able game in the series of Reincarnation on the scale of such classics as the Monkey Island series, Sam and Max Series and just about any Lucas Arts adventure game.

I’ve done a kickstarter project in the past to get dolls made of Vile the demon character from the game, and it was very successful. Therefore, I felt I’d give it another try with this project.

So, the idea behind this project is that I’ll be having a downloadable game in the Reincarnation series which I’ll be able to sell on the internet. The game will be a much longer and a more entertaining version of what I’ve been making for free. I’m planning on having over 50+ scenes to explore, a wide selection of characters to interact with in hell and on earth, different Reincarnies to find, and a wide array of silly puzzles to figure out in-order to finish your quest.

The upcoming popular game engine Unity4 will have a native exporter to GNU/Linux desktop (before you could only play Unity games via the Chrome browser) !

So many more games can be ported to GNU/Linux.

An interesting part to note from the press release :

“Unity 4 will include a preview of a new deployment option to publish games to Desktop Linux, clearing a path for the Unity community to bring exciting new content to the estimated 10% of the game-hungry PC market. Desktop Linux standalone publishing will be available for all Unity 4 users at no additional cost.”

So lets wait and see what the future holds…

Also it looks like Shadowgun *might* also have a native GNU/Linux client :

Unity 4 Linux standalone desktop publishing preview

Why Linux now?

The Linux player is an excellent example of a grassroots movement in Unity. Over two years ago, developers started using their Fridays and free time to port the engine to Linux. The port made slow progress, but was kept alive and maintained over the years. At the 2012 Ninja Camp development week, these developers spent the week furthering the porting effort, and at the end of the week, they were able to show some compelling demos. Combine this with the recent success of commercial games on Linux — for example the Humble Indie Bundle and games sold through the Ubuntu Software Center — and it was clear we needed to give our customers a chance to enter into this still-largely-untapped market that is hungry for games.

Why is it still a preview?

Supporting a new platform is no easy task –especially one that has a wide range of variations in hardware and software. It will take more testing and feedback before we will feel confident the quality is up to such a standard that we can ship a final version. However, this should not stop you from using it. Many games will run without Linux-specific problems on most modern Linux systems, and problems you encounter can be reported to us so we can fix them, resulting in a win-win situation for everyone.

Is it a publishing option just like all the other ones in terms of ease of use?

“Yes! In order to export to Linux, simply pick the “PC, Mac, & Linux Standalone” platform from the “Build Settings” menu, select a Linux player as your “Target Player” and click build.”

Do I have to pay for it?

No, it will be free just like our PC and Mac Standalone publishing options.

Why are you referring to it as “Linux” standalone desktop publishing?

Because Linux (as an operating system) runs inside of all sorts of devices, but this export option is specifically for 32 and 64-bit end-user desktop systems.

What hardware/software configurations will be supported?

While games exported from Unity will run on most modern Linux desktops, we will (at this time) only be offering official support for Ubuntu 10.04 or later, with a graphics card that has vendor-made drivers installed.

Press release

The Next Generation of the Unity Game Engine Unveiled

San Francisco – June 18, 2012 – Unity Technologies, provider of the Unity multi-platform engine and development tools, is excited to announce Unity 4, the next generation of the Unity development platform. The launch of Unity 4 demonstrates the platform’s AAA push that levels the playing field between the largest and the smallest studios, enabling anyone from the most indie game designer to the biggest multinational AAA studios to develop amazing groundbreaking games, and effortlessly deploy to multiple platforms. Customers who pre-order Unity 4 will be offered early access to the Unity 4 beta.

Unity 4 includes an overhaul of the Unity engine and tools suite to accommodate critical new features such as the highly anticipated all-new Mecanim character animation system, DirectX 11 support, hypermodern mobile graphics, and the addition of Adobe® Flash® and Linux as new publishing platforms. These new features and improvements comprise the first in a series of Unity 4 releases that will empower developers with the first truly democratic AAA game engine.

“We’ve been working on Unity 4 for a long, long time and are happy to finally be able to unveil its imminent arrival and outline its core features that will change the industry,” said David Helgason, CEO, Unity Technologies. “The revolutionary animation system and add-on deployments to Adobe Flash and Linux are some of the critical features introduced in Unity 4, which together maintain Unity as the strongest, fastest evolving modern games development platform available.”

Unity 4 includes a host of new features, updates, and improvements:

Mecanim – Groundbreaking character animation technology

Mecanim, Unity’s powerful and innovative animation technology, brings your characters to life in a few mouse clicks with incredibly fluid and natural motion. Mecanim combines a slick interface with powerful tools for creatingstate machines, blend trees, IK rigging, and auto retargeting of animations all inside of the Unity editor.

“The introduction of the Mecanim suite of animation tools into Unity will completely change how developers integrate interactive animations and will result in awesome new gameplay experiences from the Unity community,” said Robert Lanciault, Lead Animation Developer, Unity Technologies. “These tools will allow animators to work directly in Unity to create advanced anddetailed animation blend trees and state machines for incredible and natural character animation.”

An impressive array of retargetable animation will be available in the Unity Asset Store. Developers will have access to a wide range of options that will help bring their characters to life with fluidity and grace.

Visual Fidelity and AAA Rendering

Unity 4 fully supports Microsoft’s DirectX 11. This offers developers the ability to take advantage of the GPU in new and exciting ways: increased shader capabilities with shader model 5, tessellation for smoother models and environments in game worlds, and compute shaders for advanced GPU computation.

Mobile platforms have also received a boost in visual fidelity with optimizations and new features. Unity 4 features real-time shadows on mobile, skinned mesh instancing, the ability to use normal maps when baking lightmaps, and a refined GPU profiler. It’s easy to make extremely high-end visuals that scale across the best of what’s available on modern PCs and the most advanced mobile graphics chips.

Extend multiplatform publishing with Unity add-on for Adobe Flash Player

With Unity 4, developers can create a new game, or take existing Unity 3D content—for iOS, Android, desktop, or the Web — and publish it to the Adobe Flash Player, installed on more than a billion PCs worldwide. Leveraging its industry leading Editor productivity tools, Lightmap and Lightprobe baking, and Occlusion Culling tools, Unity 4 is the powerhouse development tool forcreating 3D content for the Adobe Flash Player.

Linux Publishing Preview

Unity 4 will include a preview of a new deployment option to publish games to Desktop Linux, clearing a path for the Unity community to bring exciting new content to the estimated 10% of the game-hungry PC market. Desktop Linux standalone publishing will be available for all Unity 4 users at no additional cost.

Furthermore, Unity 4 introduces a great many additions and improvements such as:

Unity 4 will be demonstrated and discussed in further detail at the Unite 2012 developer conference that takes place August 22nd – 25th in Amsterdam. For tickets and more information about Unite, visit http://www.unity3d.com/unite/.

About Unity Technologies
Unity Technologies is the creator of Unity, an intuitive and flexible development platform used to make wildly creative and intelligently interactive 3D and 2D content. The “author once, deploy everywhere” capability ensures developers can publish to all of the most popular platforms. Unity Technologies boasts a thriving community of 1,000,000 registered developersincluding large publishers, indie studios, students and hobbyists. Unity Technologies aggressively re-invests in its award-winning 3D development tools and democratization initiatives, such as the Asset Store digital content marketplace and Union game distribution service, in order to remain at the forefront of innovation. Unity Technologies is headquartered in San Francisco and has offices in Canada, China, Denmark, Lithuania, Sweden, the United Kingdom, Japan and Korea. For more information, visit: http://unity3d.com.

Unity and all other product names are trademarks of Unity Technologies or its subsidiaries or affiliates. Adobe and Flash are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Adobe Systems Incorporated in the United Statesand/or other countries. All other product names and trademarks belong to their respective holders.

Word Realms is a very unique RPG in which you need to put up words from the letters you are given in order to attack, depending on the word and number of letters you will get stronger attacks.

Out of the stretch goal of $100,000 ,already ~$96,100 have been pledged – so there is a very high chance that the project will be funded.
If you pledge $11 you will get the full game (yes there will be a GNU/Linux client), if you contribute more – you will get more things 😉

I pledged for The Curse of Shadow House from the start, but I could not post about it as it only had Android and iOS ports planned.
But today it was finally funded with 25 more hours to go.
The funding goal is 8k (achieved), and the GNU/Linux port is at 12k , it’s a lot for this project – but not so much compared to other projects.
So if you want it, we can make it (with a little help from the Windows and MacOS contributors).

The interesting part is that the whole game is done by one person it it looks excellent ! (the art is superb and the music is outstanding – listen to it from it’s kickstarter page)

“I am personally creating all of the artwork in the game, composing and performing the music, writing the stroy and putting it together so it all works well on your mobile device. Since the nature of the gameplay is pretty basic, programming the game is the easy part.”

About The GameThe Curse of Shadow House is a Homage to old school adventure games in the likes of Shadowgate, The 7th Guest, and Maniac Mansion, to name a few.

This is a game where you can lay back in bed with the lights off, pop on your headphones, and get sucked into an intriguing adventure. A world filled with a tragic love story, a strange haunted estate to explore, and an emotional, dynamic soundtrack.

The Game play is simple, you navigate from room to room,Finding items and solving puzzles in an effort to find the cure to your new found vampirism and bring an end to the Curse of Shadow House. This is the first in a series of adventures for the character..(who’s name has not been finalized)

I really just want to make this a game where you can relax and enjoy the story, graphics, sound and mood of it all while exploring and solving the puzzles. No stress of zombies chasing after you, just you taking it all in and using your wits to unlock the mystery.

Story
You are a young woman, and you have been bitten by a vampire and find yourself in a strange house…

You begin to find old pages from what appears to be a journal, scattered throughout the house.

As you find the letters, a tragic story begins to unfold…

Young Alexander Shadow has lost his Bride, Elizabeth Blackwell when she is caught in a random act of violence and is killed. Falling deeper into a depression, Alexander longs for death to be reunited with his lost love.

Overcome with grief, Alexander reaches his breaking point and vows to end his own life. Tragically, on the eve of his suicide, he is bitten by a Vampire and cursed to immortality, doomed to never see his wife again in the afterlife.

Can you put an end to the curse and free yourself from the vampirism that has befallen you? Can you reunite lost souls?

Explore a beautifully illustrated haunted estate! Solve challenging puzzles. Collect the journal pages. Create your own haunting melody on a broken old piano. Use items from your inventory to interact with the environment. Get lost in the world of The Curse of Shadow House!

HeXit is a kickstarter point and click adventure project with awesome graphics that recently committed to a GNU/Linux port if funded.
While their goal of $75,000 is high, it’s reachable within the 32 days we have left.

So if you are a sci-fi and adventure fan, this project is for you !

The GameHeXit will be a point-and-click adventure game. We believe that the atmosphere and the visuals of a game of this genre should be as spectacular as possible, so everything in the game will be presented in the form of pre-rendered graphics. We love sci-fi, exciting stories and police procedural television series. What we are trying to achieve is creating a game combining these elements, while focusing on a compelling storyline with twists and exciting adventures. We are trying our best to create a spectacular sci-fi world, which, on the one hand, looks amazing but will also exist as a realistic, richly-detailed and interactive environment in the atmosphere similar to the new Total Recall movie. Several side-stories and detailed in-game world await those who enjoy exploring everything in a game. There will be countless usable items which can be combined. HeXit will also involve several mini-games. There will be English language voice acting for all in-game dialogues.

The Episodes
Just like the successful police procedural television series, HeXit is planned as an episodic adventure. If it is possible, we wish to release several installments. Currently, we would like to receive support for the making of the first episode, which will involve 6-10 hours of gameplay.

The Characters
The main character of the game is police Lieutenant Jane Davis, who, suddenly, finds herself in the middle of a dangerous and exciting adventure. Everything seems to change around her. She used to be the hunter, but now she becomes the prey. She has to escape, so that she could clarify herself. Will there be any trusted friends she can rely on? Who will believe her, who will betray her and who will help her…? All episodes of the game will feature dozens of individual characters. They will include loveable ones and villains, robots and cyborgs.

Lodestar: Stygian Skies is a Kickstarter try for a “GNU/Linux 1st” / Open/Free source later project that currently far from it’s funding goals.
While the concept sounds great, sadly as many other projects the developer went for the “retro” graphic style (AKA “I am not an artist and can’t hire a good one”).
So it’s hard to get lots of attention at kickstarter without showing that your project already looks good.

The idea for the game’s world is great, the world is huge and ever changing.
GNU/Linux 1st might sound good to some GNU/Linux users, but it’s a huge turnoff to the Windows users, it’s like saying to them that they are second class and not so important. – and as they are the majority and their funding is critical to the success of the campaign, it’s not a smart thing to say, in my opinion.

But as a GNU/Linux supported I’ve pledged my money and think that this project deserves to be funded, moreover – if we pass $35,000 then the source code and the art will be released under GPLv3 and CC BY-NC-SA licenses.

Update !Stainless Games wrote in the comments :
“We WILL be supporting Mac and Linux in the longer term, no matter whether we reach the stretch or not. As I mentioned in my last post here, the stretch goal helps us towards the target of accelerating how soon this stuff gets done – not whether we do it or not!”

So that means that now it’s an excellent chance for you to preorder the game and even get more games !

DO NOT CANCEL YOUR PLEDGE IF YOU ALREADY PLEDGED !

As I wrote earlier, Carmageddon: Reincarnation will have a GNU/Linux client IF $600,000 is raised.
Currently there is $568,000 and counting, so to goal of $600,000 is still reachable.
If you pledge $30, you will get a copy of their original Carmageddon & The Splat Pack from gog.com as long as 2 Carmageddon: Reincarnation downloadable copies (without DRM or via Steam, your choice).

Also if you pledge any sum you will get notified when the Android version of their original Carmageddon will arrive, and you will be able to get if for FREE on the first 24 hours of release.

So please make this very achievable dream, a reality !
Less then $32,000 is left to gather.

Also I’ve heard that if we won’t manage to raise $600,000 by kickstarters campaign end, we can still reach it via Paypal later on.

Manor of the Damned is a retro inspired action RPG that invokes the childhood memories from great console RPGs of times past. The game artwork is unique yet inspired by the SNES and Sega Genesis. Coupled with gamepad support, the look and feel of the game creates overwhelming nostalgia of an older generation and has led to Manor of the Damned being listed on IndieGames.com’s Best Indie Games of the Week.

Game Features:
– Engaging Story – You play a wandering vagabond swept up into the twisted lives of the immortal specpyres.
– Intense Action – Combine unique weapons to destroy relentless enemies and cunning monsters in this action RPG.
– Puzzles and Exploration – Only a sharp mind can unravel the secrets of the manor and the horrors of its past.
– Multiple Weapons – Dual wield weapons and items to combine their powers.
– Retro Style – Retro inspired sound effects and graphics.
– Awesome Soundtrack – Pounding industrial and eerie gothic music.
– Multiple Languages – Play in either English or Swedish.

A very small indie gaming company called “Volumes of Fun” are now porting their first game “Voxeliens” to GNU/Linux !
One of the developers Matt Williams, let me know that is should take about 1-2 months to finish the porting.
He also was happy to tell me that use the FOSS (free open source software) engine Ogre3D (which was used by many good and high quality games), QT as well as some open-source libraries.

They will be updating their blog on the porting progress, so it should be interesting to read how they are overcoming the technical challenges.

Voxeliens is a retro-style arcade shooter for the PC, in which you defend your planet from waves of descending enemies. The gameplay is simple and fast paced as you battle your way through different environments using a variety of powerups. Think Space Invaders would have been better in 3D? You’re right.